Synthpop pioneers Pet Shop Boys have enlisted veteran house DJ and producer Marc Kinchen, best known as MK, for a new club-ready remix of "The Pop Kids."
The dub edit of the Stuart Price-produced single comes in anticipation of the duo's forthcoming 13th studio album, Super, which is due out April 1.
Featuring Kinchen's signature frenetic high hats, "The Pop Kids" remix transforms the hard-hitting '90s club-influenced track into a timeless rave banger. The edit officially drops March 18 as part of a remix package, but the band premiered a stream of the track ahead of its release via MixMag. Listen below.
The dub edit marks a reunion between MK and the duo consisting of Neil Tennant and Stuart Lowe. Kinchen last worked with the band 23 years ago when he reworked their 1993 single "Can You Forgive Her?"
"The Pop Kids" (Remixes), which will only be available via digital formats, consists of four different reinterpretations of the song. In addition to a radio edit of MK's dub mix, the release features another version by Israeli DJ and producer Offer Nissim as well as a deep dub version by the band themselves.
As the band steps up their promotion campaign in support of Super, the alternate cuts will be released on the same day as "The Pop Kids" single package. That offering will include the band's own deep dub version of the single as well as an extended version featuring additional verses that recount the outfit's several decades-long history.
Additionally featured on the single package is "One-Hit Wonder," which was produced by the Pet Shop Boys and mixed by Pete Gleadall. According to a press statement, the track is actually a new version of an instrumental track Tennant and Lowe originally wrote in 1981. The duo remade it in 2014 as the theme for a Berlin-based online TV music show, "The One-Hit Parade," and the forthcoming offering marks the first time the full track has officially been released.
This month marks Pet Shop Boys' 30-year anniversary at the top of the charts. On March 15, 1986, the duo debuted at No. 45 on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart with the now-classic cut "West End Girls." The track was No. 1 by May of that same year, marking the first of 10 No. 1 tracks and 28 top 10s in the outfit's career thus far, Billboard reports.
